By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

February 20, 2015

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Real fasting isn't just restricting food choices, it must also include cleansing the heart of all selfishness and making room in one's life for those in need and those who have sinned and need healing, Pope Francis said. Faith without concrete acts of charity is not only hypocritical, "it is dead; what good is it?" he said, criticizing those who hide behind a veil of piety while unjustly treating others, such as denying workers fair wages, a pension and health care.

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

February 4, 2015

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero will be beatified in San Salvador "certainly within the year and not later, but possibly within a few months," said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the postulator or chief promoter of the archbishop's sainthood cause.

By Dennis Sadowski

Catholic News Service

February 20, 2015

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CNS) -- For the past five years, Elouisna Francois has lived where God sent her. Never mind that it's far from her old neighborhood in the capital — where she had made a good life until the country's January 2010 earthquake -- and that there are no basic services, like running water, sanitation or electricity.

By Joan Kurkowski-Gillen

North Texas Catholic

February 11, 2015

FORT WORTH -- When you ask longtime Most Blessed Sacrament parishioner Becky Lucas to describe her pastor’s approach when it comes to tending his flock, she recalls the death of a young Marine who was buried from the Arlington church.

Reviewed by Nancy L. Roberts

Catholic News Service

February 13, 2015

Holly Ordway, author of Not God's Type, was a well-educated English professor who dismissed belief in God as so much superstition. While her family was not hostile toward religion and even adopted some cultural Christian practices such as playing Christmas carols, as a child she neither opened the Bible nor attended church.

By Jerry Circelli

North Texas Catholic

February 13, 2015

As a former stand-up comic, Rik Swartzwelder knows that timing is, well, everything. That has translated into his career as a producer, writer, director, and actor, and no better example is his latest film, “Old Fashioned." The redemptive, faith-based love story debuts in theaters on Valentine’s Day weekend, the same time as “Fifty Shades of Grey” — a dark, woman-meets-masochist offering from Hollywood.”